Send Some: Indicators Love (week 3)

@cibersheep Yes, I am not suggesting we do an exact clone of GNOME or Android. There are things I don't like about both as well. But really, there's only so much you can fit on a screen, and having too much settings/information in indicators, is just as bad as having too little, if not worse.

@cibersheep well if you need location you need to pull down on network and swipe left as location icon is not shown as it is not enabled yet.
and if I'm in the network to switch wifi on and then I want to go to notifications I can: scroll the top bar and tap notifications (but it's difficult to reach with one hand) or I can navigate by press and drag the bottom bar (easier with one hand) but I have to pass through all the indicators. hiding/disabling unused would improve the UX lot IMO

@mymike I agree that there are some indicators that I use far more than others, and some I use not at all, so I wonder if it is possible / desirable to be able to customize the top bar? But at the same time be able to reach other settings easily, when necessary. (Actually, it's not that hard to reach any settings really, is it!?)

@3arn0wl Hehehe... the files indicator is for download (any app that uses the Download Manager to download a file will show in the file indicator, for example, Podbird or the Browser?).

About to make an most used app indicator... I don't think is a good idea, it's not the place for it. You can favorite apps on top of the app scope, or in the Dash

Don't worry about scopes, they are going away (1 minute of silence) between apps and indicators, I would say if you print a document, you have an app that prints and an indicator that tells you that a document is being printed. On other cases the lines goes a bit away.

, I would say if you print a document, you have an app that prints and an indicator that tells you that a document is being printed.

Nope. There is no indicator for printing under unity8. There are only notifications for ink/toner low and such. The old print indicator was basically useless in success cases, so we did not implement it under unity8, but instead only have a daemon which notifies for error conditions.

@3arn0wl Sure. But "less is more" is also true. We don't need to stuff it with every possible thing for indicators to be better. You've got to cut all the fatty tissue out of a steak to get the best parts. No different with software.

@dobey
I know that things change, and we shouldn't cling on to things that people don't want, but we also need to be careful of the direction of change. I'm seeing something that looks like iOS 1.0 this morning. Not where we should be heading, IMO.

@3arn0wl That's a very odd comparison to make. Personally, I don't know what iOS 1.0 was like, or why you think you're seeing it here. That just sounds like a denigrating comment for the sake of it, instead of discussing any actual problems or concerns. Let's not let fear of change dictate what we do with the system we've been given the opportunity to care for.

If we want to make things better, we need to discuss the real issues, and concerns, not just be afraid of losing some unnamed "thing" with the software. But this thread wasn't really about addressing specific concerns either. These week long threads are more about drive-by design sessions of one aspect of the UT experience. It seems people were pretty confused by what indicators even are, in this one. Which actually points to more issues with them.

But I think we shouldn't have a lengthy discussion about those issues, in this thread. Maybe a new thread, or in issues on github/gitlab, would be a better place to organize that.